!Women Art Revolution

Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson ("Conceiving Ada," "Teknolust") was on the front lines of the feminist art revolution that began in the 1960s, and she has been filming events and interviewing artists over the past 40 years, as if planning for "!Women Art Revolution," a most absorbing documentary.

"I felt an urgency to capture that moment," Hershman Leeson says in her narration. "I wasn't about to trust my own memory, which was fragile even then."

She starts by asking random people on the street to name three female artists; most can't get past Frida Kahlo. By the end of the film, you'll be searching out the work of Judy Chicago, Sheila de Bretteville, Faith Ringgold, Miranda July and the Guerrilla Girls, among many others.

One reason for this anonymity is that it was a struggle for women to get their shows into museums and galleries, a problem that exists even today.

Fortunately, "!Woman Art Revolution" isn't a stuffy museum piece. It's an important documentary, sure, but it's also playful and engaging. Most satisfactorily, the artwork itself bolsters the interviews and old footage, which benefit from Hershman Leeson's authority and affection.

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What's nice about the documentary is that it not only serves as an informative and entertaining primer on women's art in the United States over the past 40 years, but it is also part of a larger project ( www.rawwar.org) to preserve all the interview footage and archival footage for educational purposes.